Michael Mandelbaum Quotes

But your questions, which are unanswerable without exception, all spring from the same erroneous thinking.

Do not believe just because you want to believe.

This illustrates an important truth, namely, that the worse your logic, the more interesting the consequences to which it gives rise.

If we choose a weak and foolish speculation as a primary textbook illustration (falsely assuming that the tale possesses a weight of history and a sanction of evidence), then we are in for trouble - as critics properly nail the particular weakness, and then assume that the whole theory must be in danger if supporters choose such a fatuous case as a primary illustration.

Your reasoning is excellent, it's only your basic assumptions that are wrong.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.

Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear.

Truth is a good dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.

To the extent that philosophical positions both confuse us and close doors to further inquiry, they are likely to be wrong.

Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.

When any opinion leads to absurdity, it is certainly false; but it is not certain that an opinion is false because it is of dangerous consequence.

Majorities are generally wrong, if only in their reasons for being right.

The more one-dimensional an explanation of something complex and far reaching, the greater the grounds for skepticism.

Obviously something is wrong with the entire argument of "obviousness".

I don't do formal debates, because formal debates where you have two people up on a stage in equal status, and each of them is given 20 minutes to give their point of view, and then 10 minutes for a rebuttal, or whatever, that creates the illusion that you really do have here two equal points of view of equal scientific standing.

Interviewers actively fool themselves, finding ways to learn from interviews even if there's actually nothing there to learn from.

I'm a fan of robust debate, and I'm not averse to engaging in the odd ad hominem attack myself.

Deep reading refers to a whole continuum of processes that include some of the most important things about thinking and how we connect thought to what we read - critical analysis, analogical reasoning, how we infer from the text, how do we take another's perspective.

There's certain things that people hold as truth but that are not always necessarily true.

Without evidence, anything goes. Think about it. Common sense says the sun goes round the Earth. Who agrees with me?

There can be a conspiracy, but the presence of a conspiracy is actually not an excuse for conspiracy thinking.

The tree of nonsense is watered with error, and from its branches swing the pumpkins of disaster.

You should never assume. You know what happens when you assume. You make an ass out of you and me because that's how it's spelled.

The forming of general maxims from particular observation is a very nice operation; and nothing is more usual, from haste or a narrowness of mind, which sees not on all sides, than to commit mistakes in this particular.